We’ve tried the newTitan. It’s a fine two-player game, and I can see it working even better with 3, 4, or 6. It is certainly a typical British/American wargame—lots more fiddly rules than the svelte and streamlined Eurogames (Tikan, Settlers, etc.). There’s a Combat Result Table. There are dice pools. Like many such games, last man standing wins. Players are eliminated in turn. Whoever is not eliminated has won by default. There are three common problems with such games, and Titan addresses each.

1. Eliminated players may be bored. By the time Titans are dying off, there are usually many powerful armies around and at least one Titan with teleportation. The end-game will be only a few more turns.
2. Let’s you and him fight. The way to win a three-way fight is to fight the weakened winner of a two-way fight. The constrained strategic movement and recruiting system makes it harder to avoid combat while the other players fight, the point system rewards early engagement, and the legion size-caps reduce the weakening from defeating an enemy.
3. Turtling. Most games undervalue the return on investment in heavy defense, particularly when combined with (2). Because you have to move to recruit, and movement zones are moderately predictable, it’s quite reasonable for two Legions to run a third to ground. Legion size and number caps also help here.

I look forward to trying a large game.

“The thing I’ve noticed about being a Solar is that you’re always either loved or reviled. Generally, both at once. And you always seem to have the choice between the bad thing and the worst thing. Generally, people seem to prefer the worst thing — so that’s what I’m going to do.” - Koyenne

Dungeon Twister is roughly in the genre of Talisman or DungeonQuest, the Game That Hurts. A couple teams of classic adventurer types loot an abandoned ruin. It’s nice to leave with the treasure, but it’s pretty good just to make it out alive. I’m ridiculously hopeful about this genre. I buy or try game after game, but they all share a series of problems: low interactivity, excessive randomness, and low replay value. Talisman can be played solitaire without much loss of fun. Frankly, it can be played with no players at all. DungeonQuest is equivalent to a coin flip. Heads, the dragon eats you. Tails, you get the treasure and then the dragon eats you. Edge, you make it out OK.

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The excellent game Weapons of the Gods has some neat systems. I’m not playing WotG right now, but I am playing Exalted. I’d like to use some of these ideas in my Exalted game. Some of the ideas translate easily. Others require more work. The games use different dice systems. When a WotG book says “made a Moderate (20) roll,” what difficulty do I use for Exalted?
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Many have written about the effect that the works of Gary Gygax had on their lives. Cartoons like xkcd and Order of the Stick have expressed the feeling of the gaming community very clearly, more so than most texts I’ve seen. Steve Jackson’s words on the subject set me to thinking: what did Gygax bring to the hobby? I know what insight the boxed Basic Set gave to me:

Formal systems describe worlds, characters, and stories.

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Our first big combat happened last night. Three PCs (a Servant, a
Thief, and a Vagabond) were in the sewers trying to clear their names
by finding the real killer. They came upon a Skaven hive. One
guard saw them and sounded the alarm, so they ended up fighting half a
dozen common clanrats and a visiting dignitary assassin-poisoner.

The battle had several points of tactical interest—especially as I’m
still trying to learn what makes for good play for tactical players.

First, a character’s chance to hit in WFRP is solely dependent on his
skill. There are defenses—but they’re not rolled off against one
another, as in Exalted. And there’s no AC, as in d20. An attacker
rolls against his own Weapon Skill. If he succeeds, he hit. A single
bit flies from attacker to defender. The defender may make a defense
roll. This is only against his own Agility (if he has the Dodge Blow
skill) or his own Weapon Skill (if Parrying). A single bit flies back
to the attacker. Then a damage roll is made. This makes for
tremendously fast gaming: you don’t have to ask the target what his AC
is. You don’t have to tell him what your result is, and wait for him
to compare. Running 7 opponents, I could play them very quickly,
interacting fluidly with all the players.

One player commented today that this made the boss brutal: if you did
anything overly aggressive near him, you’d die. He had a 60% chance
to hit, two attacks per turn if he didn’t move, and did enough damage
to kill quickly. So if you sacrificed your defense for a +10% chance
to hit, you’d hurt him and then he’d probably kill you. In fact, if
you didn’t have both Dodge and Parry (and only one character in this
group has Dodge), you’d be in terrible danger from him. Even with
just the one attack, he was exactly twice as likely to hit each PC as
the clanrats with their 30% chances to hit. The PC with the 60%
chance to dodge was half as likely to be hit by any given attack as
the PC with the 20% chance to parry.

This independence makes statting up characters a breeze.

The players also got a nice introduction to shields, tunnel fighting,
why you don’t want to be surrounded, how fighting in tight lines might
be useful, and the difficulties of mixing ranged and hand-to-hand
combat. I do think they’ll try much harder next time to ensure that
the bowman and the slingers are back from the melee, able to keep and
control their range.

I got to learn something about satisfying player desires, clarity of
statements, and what happens when the PCs get surrounded. When a line
of PCs met a line of rats in a tunnel, the players of the PCs at the
back complained of boredom. If I’d left them that way, the PCs could
have safely chewed threw the line of rats: the PC in the front
outclassed each rat, and the PCs in back were better with bow and
sling than the rats in back were with thrown rocks.

Since the player at the back complained, I let the rats run on walls
to move into melee with him. I gave them some penalties for doing
this, like saying it took one hand and both feet to hang on to the
wall, so they could neither parry nor dodge. But it let the rats
surround and out-number the PCs.

It felt for much of the fight like I might kill the PCs. I think I’m
learning that most good fights will feel that way: putting pressure on
early, but slackening as the mook NPCs fall down. Eventually, the PCs
outnumber the big bad guy 3 to 1, and he goes down.

From a thread on rpg.net, I begin to see why Exalted has some of the
disconnection it does. It doesn’t make it a bad game, but… well,
look at this quote from John Snead, one of the authors:

…As long as there are applicable stats (charisma and wisdom
primarily, and a variety of social skills (bluff, diplomacy, gather
information, intimidate, & sense motive) then you have all you need,
the rest is roleplaying, which for me is far more important in social
sequences than in combat, because social sequences are the more
interesting portion of the game, and thus the place where I want rules
to have the least affect. I love Exalted, but I’ll never use Social
Combat, and argued successfully against anything remotely similar
being included in Blue Rose.

I do not in any way understand the idea that the focus of the
mechanics are the focus of the game, for me mechanics should be easy
and fast (both true of True20) and should serve to specifically handle
those sections of gaming that are not the primary focus of the
campaign. The major (and fairly long) climactic scene of the best
session of Blue Rose I ever ran involved not a single die roll -
everyone deeply got in character and roleplayed marvelously, which was
especially surprising since it was at a convention game at Origins,
and so was with totally unfamiliar players. In any case, so-called
"mechanical support" would have gotten in the way and made that scene
far less interesting and powerful than it was.

Anything this man writes about mechanics or system is going to be
worse than useless to me. I’ll need to excise it from my game, since
it’ll be otherwise constantly getting in my way. I want rules to
mediate and schedule the interesting parts of my game. If we’re
bargaining for influence, make it currency! If there’s tactical
positioning to do, give me a map and some system for movement.

The funny thing is, he’s a systems guy. He wrote a bunch of the magic
rules for Dying Earth, and they’re fantastic. They’re not the core
of the game—that’s snide remarks and hat design—but they’re
certainly important to getting the feel right.

I wonder if part of this is due to different definitions of "system".
After all, the most fun part of Shadowrun is the prep and planning.
There’s no dice-rolling then, but plenty of IC arguments… backed up
by a rich system of price and availability. When it starts to get
un-fun, an OOC argument over wise plans, is when I find myself wanting
more system, not less. By calling on a system agreed upon in
principle beforehand, we resolve a conflict and get back to the fun
part. I think we’d agree that the latter part is system, but I’m not
sure he’d see the former as system. He might characterize it as a
very well-established setting.

I don’t have links to the threads mentioned above handy; I’ll edit
them into this post Thursday some time.

Burning Empires didn’t work out too well for my group. More on that
at a later date, perhaps—I’m reluctant to write about stresses and
tensions until I’ve thought about why that game failed for this group.

One bit that everybody agreed worked was the World Burner, a
collaborative mechanism for setting design. Kasumi, a regular poster
to rpg.net, wrote a variant called Apotheosis for use with
advanced Exalted games. It’s wonderful. The important part to look
at there is Step Two, where everybody’s nominating important
components: factions that are involved, can’t be involved, etc.

I’d like to do something similar for a campaign I’m working on. A few
years ago, I ran a game called Conspiracy Theories. It was quite
successful. I wasn’t thrilled with the ending, but I learned a great
deal from the process of running it. I and most of the players seemed
to have a very good time. I liked it so much that I haven’t run
anything in that genre since. Now I’m reading Harry Dresden books,
and would like to do something like that again.

These, therefore, are thoughts on how to construct such a setting.

Publicity

How public is magic, sorcery, the otherworldly, in this setting? Do
vampires appear in People, like the Anita Blake books? Are they
hidden, as in Dresden Files or Buffy? Is there any public
supernatural activity at all, like Dresden’s yellow-pages ad as a
Wizard?

If the magic is occult, why? General agreement? A faction of
guardians protecting it and killing anyone who might step out of line?
A natural force, like Paradox? The flavor of the occult, like GURPS
Voodoo, where magic never has definite effect? Collusion between the
aliens and the opposing government, both of whom find secrecy to their
advantage?

Magic Style

What is in the world, and what’s available to the PCs? Collectively
figure out what might be there.

• Dresden-style sorcery, immediate and powerful in its application?

• Bob Howard (Atrocity Archives) magic, with slow rituals and lots of
  reading ahead of time?

• Advanced technical gadgetry, requiring some skill and significant
  infrastructure, but usable by those not able to replicate that
  infrastructure (see the old Conspiracy Theories for some of this)

• Psychic powers

• I’m missing many things here: hereditary shape-shifting powers,
  sacrificial summoning… it might be best to start by letting each
  player throw in something in addition to those above.

It’s very possible that only some of these will be available to the
whole PC group, and that others will be used by particular factions.
If you’d like some to not show up, ban them in the "Factions not
Present" section below.

For any that are present, it’s fair game for a PC to buy into them:
the one PC psychic, alien, witch, whatever. See Giles and then
Willow, for example.

Backing and Cohesion

Are the PCs lone occult investigators? Backed by a government agency?
Cooperating agents of different governments? Part of a supernatural
conspiracy, like the Illuminati?

Allied Factions

Go around the table. Each player may nominate a faction allied to the
PCs. The group should sketch out a leader or point of contact for
that faction, and his relation to the PCs, before proceeding to
nominate the next faction.

For each such faction, one PC should either have a tense and
conflicted relationship with the named NPC member, or should have a
hostile history with the faction itself.

Opposed Factions

Go around the table. Each player may nominate a faction opposed to the
PCs. The group should sketch out a leader or point of contact for
that faction, and his relation to the PCs, before proceeding to
nominate the next faction. This doesn’t mean nobody else will show
up, but narrative conservation will ensure these are the most common
antagonists.

For each such faction, one PC should either have a friendly
relationship with the named NPC member, or should have a friendly
history with the faction itself.

Principal Opposition

Together, decide on one Big Bad—Lo Pan, the Bat Thing, the Grey
Aliens, the Vampire Queen Bianca, the Mind—this can be an
individual, a faction, or a faction with a named proponent as above.

Note: this part’s not well done yet. It may be best to have
surprises, and I’m not sure how to handle that.

Factions not Present

Go around the table. Each player may nominate a faction or plot
thread which will not appear in the game. For example, those playing
in my games might want to know that Lectroids will not appear, nor
will this turn out to be a game of Mage: the Ascension.

My weekly [Burning Empires][] group has been having difficulty with some
of the mechanics. Some are not well-written as technical
specifications. No matter how much fun they are to read, they’re
difficult to apply. Some just take a very long time—we’re
considering ways to shorten the application of these. But one has
caused problems all on its own: the Duel of Wits, Burning Empire’s
social conflict mechanic. The Duel of Wits was inherited from Burning
Wheel with minimal changes, so you might understand it as well from
there.

This has led me to comparison between several games mechanics for
resolving social conflicts. They can be classified on several
principles:

• Why is the mechanic here? Is it to force an end to player
  conflicts, or to simulate convincing characters?

• What is the conclusion? Does it let one player edit another’s
  character sheet? Let one character influence another? Provide
  incentives and influence? Commit players to binding deals?

• By what means does it operate, combining randomness, character
  skill, player skill, and player desire?

• How broadly are they available? Is this just something for
  dedicated preachers and diplomats, or a common mechanic?

Burning Empires and Burning Wheel

The Duel of Wits is a core mechanic of the game: the easiest way to
extend a conflict beyond a single roll. It appears to be there
because the author, Luke Crane, had problems with on-running arguments
in his group. Now one player can demand another engage in the Duel of
Wits or drop the argument. At the beginning, players name forfeits
from the other side. At the end, they agree on a compromise between
those forfeits based on the result of the die rolls. To cut down on
randomness and provide some room for player skill, there’s a
RPS-derived mechanic for integrating die
rolls to produce a final score. Variance in this score influences the
balance of the compromise.

This is a player-level commitment. Once, I thought this was a great
idea. Having now seen that some players don’t like being bound in
this way, I’m not certain that it’s right for all groups or for
long-term commitments. It’s fine for getting one player to shut up
about how he hates the group’s shadowrunning plan—for that night.
It’s not going to work to get the Elf and the Dwarf to stop bickering
over racial supremacy issues.

Weapons of the Gods

An extensive social conflict system, tied to the medicine and sorcery
mechanics. All of these work by imposing Chi Conditions: incentive
pairs. For example, a Courtier might impose the condition "In Love,"
specifying that the target receives a bonus to certain other
die-rolls, or a resource useful for the broader game, in every scene
in which he makes eyes at his beloved. A less pleasant Courtier might
make this a negative condition, so that the target receives a penalty
in any scene in which he does not moon around.

These are slow to set up—it’s typical for players to show up for a
session with the Chi Conditions they intend to use in mind. These
don’t show up in high-action conflict. Pre-existing Chi Conditions
can have great impact there.

Because this is an incentive system, players never have the chance to
complain about others abuse of the system—you’re not bound to
behave in a particular way, you merely have set costs.

Exalted, Second Edition

There’s a very complicated tactical mini-game for social conflict.
It’s built parallel to the basic physical combat system, without
concepts of Soak (armor). Just as a Mass Combat system exists as a
modifier to the base combat system, a Mass Social Combat system exists
to model religious conversions and the like.

The game is heavily focused on player skill: the vast quantity of
rolls smooth out most randomness. At the end, a target character has
been convinced of something, but his player may spend a scarce
resource to have his character act in contravention of this belief.
It’s not clear what this represents in the imagined space: is the
character stubborn? strong-willed? Used to mind-control and so
willing to act against his own beliefs from time to time? This escape
clause is there to make it harder to change a player’s character
without his agreement, so it doesn’t have an easy translation to the
imagined world.

Over time, repeated losses of this Social Combat system can edit a
character’s sheet, contradicting a player’s original intent for his
character.

Dungeons and Dragons v3.5

This game has a Diplomacy skill, not often rolled. Most GMs drift
this to require player roleplay, use this to judge "plausible
reactions," and let dice adjust a bit within that.

There’s an entirely different mechanic around the Bluff and Sense
Motive skills. A contest of skill rolls lets one character lie to
another. There’s not a lot of opportunity given for a player to let
his character fail one of these tests, or insist that one particular
test is important.

"We walk out the door."

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that in games. I heard
it last night. As before, it was a moment of terror: a blank canvas
thrown in front of me, with a demand that I make something
interesting. It’s a larger relative of the moment after hearing "I
get 4 successes to know about the history of this place." Any
knowledge skill works the same way: simulationist players demand that
I fill in more of the world.

I’ve got a new realization from last night: I don’t have to continue
the game right outside the door. I can pick up a scene however much
later I want. I’ve still got more to learn about this: last night I
guessed that the players wanted more time exploring the catacombs,
asked, and was confirmed. I should be able to read that, or just have
confidence in my own choices. But since I can skip forwards, I can
give them a scene of exploration, then jump right to an attacking
troll.

I fumbled a bit of that troll attack: by giving so much forecasting of
it, I gave the players a chance to avoid it. They wanted more
interaction, but played their characters as trying to avoid any
interaction. That’s crazy, but that’s players for you.

On the other hand, the random wandering exploration scene was
interesting color: one guy wanted to drop back and hide from the other
PCs, and another wanted to "fumble" checking for danger and
"accidentally" cause a cave in to isolate the skulker. That was neat!
I’m not sure how to do that from the GM’s chair. I guess players have
to do it themselves. It sure would be nice if players could have some
freedom to call for color and building scenes like that.

This was all with the free Burning Wheel
scenario "The
Sword"
I’m so happy with the BW demo scenarios, I’m even willing to run them
again if there’s call for that.